Apartment with external shutters can still overheat if situated in a strong urban heat island and heatwave endures for long time...

Yes it looks very German: the Rolladen, the Balkonsolar and also just the steel construction style of the balcony itself

A couple of nights ago 2 riders in the Tour de France (from INEOS I thought) also slept on the balcony because their hotel rooms were too hot. Amazing that these athletes, who ride for 3 weeks at insane altitude (not all the time, but still) don't even get a good night's sleep.

that solar is plug in balcony solar, meaning it probably doesn't have a battery, so only works when the rest of the power grid is working. if they are in a power outage it isn't providing power. that's for safety reasons as they don't want these balcony solar units to back feed into the larger power grid that would cause power companies from working on power lines

Yeah but it tells of a better efficiency

Yes, this is correct. A standard residential doorway in Germany is required to be at least 90cm/~35”. Even if we say this is another European country, the width will be similar. Let’s be generous and add another 10cm/~4” for a total width of 100cm/39”.

The tent is hardly wider than the door it is next to.

No adults are sleeping in that tent.

The tent is barely wider than the door it is next to. Assuming Germany (though most countries will be similar) the standard residential minimum is 90cm door width. Even if you add 10-20cm for a more generous width of the door behind it no adult at 170cm will be sleeping in that tent.

Mosquitos: “looks like meat is back on the menu boys!!”

Skill issue

So, you as the owner get the cost, almost no money for the energy but also no off-the-grid security? Do i see a pattern?

Yeah, bull.

I think they are called "storm shutters" in america?

Can an adult fit in that?

This lady (and I use the term loosely) smokes so much pot that she's become paranoid as hell. She doesn't eat. She only drinks vegetable smoothies.

Well, much better than the constant 32°C the neighbour in the topmost apartment had at the end of the big 10 day heatwave!
Especially when you manage to keep the humidity in a lower range.

The only minor upside from the fact, that it also is one of the driest summers in my region so far:
No mosquitos.
Even the freshly imported Asian Tiger Mosquitos, which normally start roaming in July and need less open water, are almost completely absent (and they are only active during daytime).

Why?
The external shutters only help keeping the sun out during daytime.
Once the walls have heated up (which takes 3-4 days, as these are massive brick walls), you have a nice constant 30°C, day as night...

No, this type of external shutters is standard for German homes, so tells not much by itself.
As for the efficiency: Buildings here are mainly designed for colder weather, with the intent to keep the warmth inside and at a constant temperature (thick, massive walls and insulation on the outside). And at this, they are very efficient.
But during the recent, unusually long heat waves, once the heat managed to seep in (typically after 3-4 days), you are basically screwed, as you have no chance to lower the inside temperature without AC.
Temperature stays high even at night, trapped in the walls.

I did this when I was visiting Mexico. Probably some of the best sleep I've had in my life. Balcony was on the North side of the building. Even though it was hot outside, the extra airflow through the hammock kept me pretty cool.

It mainly covers your base consumption.
Profit you make is the savings you have because you have to purchase less electric energy from your provider.
Typically pay for themselves within 3-4years for such an installation on south facing balcony in my region.
The rest of the 20years of its lifetime is just free money after that.
I have a two panel installation, saving me ~120€ per year.

Seems useless, you'd need to be awake to take the shot.

I recommend an automatic "Bird Banger" to scare them away periodically.

Where I live, excessive smoking seems to be thankfully mainly a thing of the past.
At least cigarettes.
Only one regular tobacco smoker in my building, but at least two or three smoking weed...

1. Tropical nights
2. German houses (massive walls acting like night storage ovens after some days in the heat)

.
Not that I didn't try the fan solution. Done properly, I managed to reduce the air temperature by about 1°C by early morning compared to the evening.

Spot on, I live in Germany!
This kind of shutters are standard here and are actually great!
But during longer heat they still loose most of their advantage, as at some point the heat has just seeped through the massively build outer walls (and stays in the walls for a nice, cozy bedtime temperature of ~30°C on the upper floors...)

Third extended heat wave within 6 weeks.

The previous one exceeded 40°C, and the buildings not yet had time to completely cool down from that one before the third wave hit.

No man, you didn't have 3 heatwaves in 6 weeks. you had 1 coldsnap in 6 weeks, where the temperatures were lower than the current normal due to global warming.

Open windows make it so much worse if the air is very hot and/or there is no wind - which is often the case in many places

Said that, i syill keep them open because i got one of those fans that cool air using water which makes a lot of humidity that somehow i need to remove

It was the Norwegian Halland-Johannesen twins of Uno-X Mobility that had the great idea.

All of the teams carry mobile air-conditioners and purifiers, but for unknown reasons Uno-X didn't bring any to their hotel

Telling a German to open windows is like telling a bird how to fly. Stoßlüften is down to a precise science here.

But it doesn’t matter with the temperatures and building construction style. They retain heat like crazy. It’s not getting cold enough at night for the buildings to lose all their thermal energy, even creating air flow through the building with a fan. Source: me with all my windows open in a 4th floor apartment with the inside temperature sitting at 28°C at near midnight.

Lots of both around here, and no sense of either how strong it smells or how much it affects asthma.

Having used both, American storm shutters are inferior to rolladen.

Beat me to it, a lot of the apartments around here built prior to AC had these, but many have since been removed or enclosed into conditioned living space. All you'd need is a bug net on a balcony to recreate it, unless you sleep in the buff.

They are pretty small. Some measurements for the tents I looked up were 205 x 150 x 105 cm and 200 cm x 140 cm x 100 cm. It probably looks smaller here than what the actual floor measurements are.They're not spacious but adults do fit in them

I can do it with a fan but like, it's not a great sleep. I also forgot I turned on the timer and I woke up almost immediately when it turned off ...

Yeah, I lived in Switzerland for a time, and they're pretty normal there too. When it got hot, sometimes I'd throw the windows wide open at night and let the place cool down to 20ish. Then, around 9am I'd shut all the windows and shades. I was also lucky because I had windows on opposite sides of the apartment, so I had good cross ventilation to blow the heat out.

When I'd come home it would be low-20s or mid-20s inside, while outside it was above 30. But, like you said, if the heat wave lasted too long, the concrete would heat up. I'd still throw open the windows at night, but once the concrete of the building was up to about 30 degrees, even if it dropped below 20 at night, it would still be 25ish indoors in the morning.

At that point, when it was 25ish indoors, below 25 outside (but heating up) and 30ish degrees in the walls, I wasn't sure if it was smarter to shut everything and try to keep the warm air out, or open things and hope that the ventilation allowed the concrete to cool.

Also, at night even though cross-ventilation was a good plan, and it cooled things off, I lived in a loud neighbourhood (by Swiss standards) and it was so much easier to sleep with the windows shut. Those windows reduce the noise from outside so much.

Great for sleeping in with a hang over. Wake up ready for lunch.

New Yorkers back in the day.

In my own experience, you can do some amount of heat management with those shutters and the window by chosing when you have them open and when you have them closed - whilst without aircon the appartment tends towards the average temperature of the whole day, you can push it a bit more one way or the other by managing sun exposure and air circulation in favor of the hours when the temperature is more towards the end you want.

What I did were I live during the last heat wave (which around here had max temps above 40C) was to during most of the day keep the shutters down and the windows closed, and then during the night and in the early morning having the window open and just the holes of the shutters open (the shutters are made of strips and the are some holes between them, so when you pull them up they first just open the holes and only after all the holes parts of the strips are exposed if you keep pulling them up wil the shutters lift up - example)

In simple terms, during the hours when the sunlight would hit my windows it was hitting the shutters instead and either being reflected or converted to heat outside rather than inside (as those shutters are installed outside), and air was allowed to circulate between the outside and inside only when it was colder outside.

That said, for a couple of days I had to help the air circulation during the colder hours a bit with a fan, since just passive circulation through the half-open shutters wasn't enough.

This way I managed to keep the inside temperature mostly below 30C, with no aircon.

You can kinda do some managing of when the shutters are open, half-open or closed as well as when the windows behind them are open or closed, to keep heating from sunlight outside and tilt air-circulation in favor of the colder hours but, yeah, eventually even that is fighting the wall of the building itself having warmed up.

Here in Portugal (were that kind of shutters are also very common) I did manage to, for most days of the one 40C+ heatwave we had, keep the indoor temperature below 30C, though it still creeped up (no doubt due to exactly that effect you mentioned of the building walls heating up) and after some days I actually had to use a fan to help air-circulation with the outside during early-morning and night when the air outside was colder.

The CBAM can't happen soon enough!

Stoßlüften is down to a precise science here.

You mean, not everyone in the world is using a multiple-wireless-thermometer and -hygrometer arrangement to determine the exact optimal millisecond to switch from one complex apartment window configuration to the next?

As a German, I am really confused by that idea... ;-)

From my personal experience with (unfortunately) dark grey shutters facing south: Having just the holes open allows minimal airflow, which helps decrease the temperature between them and the window - because if the sun bakes the shutters, the air trapped behind them will get HOT - like hot enough that you can feel a difference when holding your hand against the glas.

For me it was better than having them completely closed, also it allowed a tiny bit of natural light in, but your mileage may vary

The picture of them at central park looks like the Jonestown aftermath lol. Collapsing in suits, oxfords and glasses

you know you are already on the internet, you could do a google search and learn about these plug in balcony solar kits yourself. your browsers search bar is literally right there.

the point of these balcony solar kits isn't to make fucking money, or to put electricity onto the grid. the point and how they work is your household appliances will use the electricity from the balcony solar first before going to the grid to get some when needed.

electricity is like water, it's going to take the path of least resistance and go from high pressure to low pressure. pressure in this case is voltage. that should sound familiar if you paid any sort of attention in highschool. these balcony solar kits push just enough higher voltage out than the grid so your appliances like your fridge, lights, tv, etc are going to get the electricity from your balcony first. it's only when your load is too much for the solar kit to provide (load as in the amount of appliances or devices wanting power) that it then takes from the grid. it's at that point you are now being charged for electricity.

if your house is not using any electricity or using less than what your plug in solar balcony kit provides, yes it feeds that back into the grid. and if your agreement with your power company allows it, you can get credits towards grid use electricity, which is then used when you get power from the grid instead of being charged money. so really depending on your usage your 'cost' is the installation of the balcony solar kit.

and it's that feeding back into the grid which is the dangerous part during a power outage. not for you, but for the power company crew who has to go work on the lines during either a scheduled power outage or an unscheduled one. if your balcony solar kit, or several from your neighbours is pushing electricity into the grid then crews can't work on them because they are live. THAT's why these kits have a kill switch and don't work in a power outage, because you can't stop the electricity from flowing from your home back into the grid, unless the grid is on.

the POINT of these balcony solar kits isn't to keep the lights on during a power outage. it's to lower your electricity bill. if you want to keep the lights on during a power outage then you get solar with a backup battery. it's that simple. but these solar kits don't come with a battery. that's the point. they are much cheaper than a full solar off grid kit. and allow for people who are renting where they can't install full solar. especially someone in say an apartment or a condo who want solar.

Plot twist: that's just where they grow their weed.

Jesus, they even have awnings! Brutal heat wave.

I thought that with the beach one - guys conked out on the sand with their clothes on, including ties.